


Begin at the Beginning

by Ladycat



Series: Happy Endings [10]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, College, First Time, M/M, Post: s05e22 Not Fade Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:58:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were light, pale things, distant enough that anyone but Spike would pass right over them, skidding on ice gone gray with pollution, just another bit of nothing in the overload that was now common every day life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Begin at the Beginning

He notices the eyes first. They were light, pale things, distant enough that anyone but Spike would pass right over them, skidding on ice gone gray with pollution, just another bit of nothing in the overload that was now common every day life.

But Spike, Spike remembered a time when entertainment came rarely, when live was dull and dreary without an interruption beeping or blinking at you every other second. So when he sees those eyes, pleasant and smiling, not a care in the world here, la the do long day, Spike _stops_. Stares.

'Course, then Illyria walloped him one, right after. She's never met an opening she can't take advantage of. Or maybe it's just she's never met a Spike she didn't enjoy beating the crap out of.

So Spike forgives himself, a little, when it takes him another six months or so to remember the waves that seethed and rose behind those eyes, the mysteries that swirled like fog on a Hollywood set, palpable and living behind a clear glass cage.

"Oi," he says to the boy wearing a hoodie and earbuds, staring at a book he's not reading. "I need a place to kip, and you're it. Don't argue, boy, I'm near to burning up and you're _family."_

That wouldn't work on Angelus. Wouldn't work on Dru. Sure as _fuck_ wouldn't work on Darla, and Spike had nightmares about needing to say those words to Buffy or one of her ever-expanding crew.

On him, though, it worked.

That's how Spike officially met Connor.

Connor has an apartment his father's -- the non-human one -- helping to pay for. There are roommates around somewhere, but they don't show up that often. "I scare 'em away?" Spike asks, smoking at cigarette by an open window. He's been bloody tamed, he has. "Send them all running for their mummies?"

Connor gives him a strange, flat look. "Their girlfriend's places are cleaner."

Spike takes in the spotless apartment he takes great pleasure in dirtying. "Right."

Still, it's not like Spike wants adolescent brats running underfoot. He can't abide children. Well, boy children. Girl children he's been forced to admit he has a bit of an affection for, as Connor hands over the phone so Dawn can chirp at him for a while, telling him all about her new school and how much better it is to be far, far away from Sunnydale.

After those calls, Spike always looks off in the distance like his eyes are really that good to traverse the miles from where he is to where he was. Usually Connor makes him play video games, then. Says something about brooding that's usually enough to piss Spike off, too.

They don't talk about things. They _talk_ , sure, all the ruddy time. Connor's quiet except when he thinks it's safe, and then he can't shut _up_ , about this class, or that girl, or, "Sometimes I miss it, you know? The fight. The adrenaline rush, I guess. I don't miss the split knuckles."

"Look, if you hate biology so much, just drop the damn class! You don't need it, you're not exactly pre-med material."

"I'm not? You sure about that?"

"Oh for the love of -- I am not questioning your intelligence! I told you I wouldn't do that again, not with you _pouting_ at me like a champion, and I keep my bloody promises, you know that."

Connor smiles, then, like he's got a secret wrapped in pink that thrills him to his soul. "Nancy," he says, with just the wrong inflection.

They end up having a shoving match on the sofa, which invariably _breaks_ the sofa. Connor always makes Spike call Angelus and tell him.

Angelus always sighs like he's being killed by splinters and forks over whatever dosh they ask for. Privately, Spike thinks the old man _likes_ playing the doting papa, master of funds and invariably ignored except when necessary.

Connor calls him every week. They don't talk much. Just breathe to each other on the phone, thinking of things to say.

Spike doesn't listen in to those conversations. Not anymore.

"Seriously, pet, where _are_ your flatmates?" he asks, one day. It's late Spring, almost summer, or would be if they lived in a city that had actual _seasons_ to mark time's passage with. The sun is hotter through the shades that cover the windows. "You're supposed to have flatmates, it's part of the whole collegiate experience. Go out drinking to the wee hours, find a bunch of birds to shag and not call in the morning, fail all your classes together... "

Connor doesn't look up from his breakfast tonic of tomato juice and other arcane ingredients. "I go out drinking with you, I'd rather have inter-species sex with something that's at least sentient, thanks, I don't need to call in the morning, and I don't want to fail my classes. Pass the cayenne, please."

Spike hands it over. "And your flatmates?"

"I only have one," Connor replies, uninformatively.

Spike gives him a frustrated face that probably makes him look constipated and dumps the cayenne in his blood.

He spends the rest of the afternoon in the bathroom, incredibly grateful that Connor's at class.

Usually, Spike has a variety of things to amuse himself during the day. Sleeping is always good. He enjoys that, slothfully lounging about in the bed he'd bullied the Proud Papa into supplying (bitch to Connor enough and he went running to Daddy every time). There's always telly, and the new dvr the boy has holds _hours_ of delightful humans doing horrible things to each other. And Passions. He still does love that show, even if sometimes it makes him a little sad.

He cleans, sometimes. Only if it's a real mess, mind, and only when he knows that Connor's particularly stressed out about this test or that paper and the last thing he needs to be worrying about is the tension 'round the corner of his mattress, which he _will_ worry about, as anal as if he was in the bloody military.

Once, Spike called him soldier-boy. He's never done it again.

Spike's become a master of ordering take-out. He's always got some on hand when Connor comes back from his class and before they trundle off to the gym, where the two of them run each other laughing and ragged while everyone else watches. The balconies always fill up with entranced, starry-eyed students when they do that. Most of them are female, but there are a few blokes, too, all watching and cheering them on.

Spike _loves_ that. He wants to take one of them home, maybe the pretty red head that looks like she's sex incarnate, wild as a tropical storm, wet and heat and voracious appetite. Spike _likes_ red heads. He doesn't, though. He doesn't know why, just smiles at her, acts bashful and shy and obediently follows a grumpy Connor home.

Near two hundred years of being around, alive and dead, and Spike has a home now. A real one, with a hearth that's made of zenon and pixels, a lintle that's not as dusty as it should be. He's always wanted one of those, and doesn't tell Connor or his da about how happy it makes him. They'd just say stupid, hurtful things.

But he _has_ always wanted one. And lying on his bed, days, when the covers are comfortable and worn around his ankles, air conditioning shifting everything around, he can't stop the heat that uncurls under his breastbone, the way his eyes sting just a little, little shocks that go all the way down to his toes rounding out the picture.

 _Home_. A place that looks and feels like _his_ , with his choice of sofa -- Connor's was using a damned futon, of all the indignities -- and his clothes in the pile mixed with Connor's, all his favorite foods given just as much space as Connor's. It was his. Looking around Spike often couldn't remember which bits were his and which bits were Connor's.

He likes that. Makes him angry and growly, later. But when the afternoon sun hangs low in the sky and everything's quiet, he can admit it. He likes it.

Loves it.

"Look," Spike says, six months in to his staying with Connor. "About your flatmate -- "

"I've _got_ the flatmate I want," Connor snaps, voice so low and rich that Spike instantly stills, can't breathe in the face of this new predator. "Stop it, Spike."

And Spike, who is clearly stark raving bonkers and will say so to anyone who asks him, leans forward and kisses that petal-pink mouth with all it's restrained, repressed history.

When he pulls back he's a wee -- tiny! tiny little bit! -- afraid to actually look up at Connor's face. It's not that he's _scared_ of the boy, it's just that he knows how broken Connor is, knows how easy it his for him to slip from one shattered fragment of a personality to the other. Connor is Connor, yes, but he's also Stephen, Holt's revenge, and Stephen, the boy who remembers nothing at all, as well as lots of broken, glittering bits that Spike hasn't handled too much, because he doesn't fancy slicing his own damn fingers off.

Especially when Connor can -- and might -- happily do it for him.

"Er," he says. "You did mean me, as your flatmate, right?"

Connor's not breathing. It's not a cause for alarm, not yet, since Connor can hold his breath longer than any human really should. But it's disconcerting to watch his chest not rise and fall, like that, his face a neutral mask that Spike knows contains a maelstrom, winds that would shred a man's skin from his bones whipping past lightning that would fry the bloodied remains where it stood. All of that tumbled behind the clean, smooth mask of a boy who isn't in shock, just isn't moving, or _breathing_.

"I can go," Spike says over the sound of his nonexistent heart beating. "If you want. I. Don't call your Da, please. I'll just. Go."

It's all been leading to this and Spike hadn't even _known_ , not till his lips touched warm ones that pursed and moved back towards his, eager and wanting and oh. Hang on, that's how they are _now_.

Spike blinks, trying to see past a haze of his own creating, to find Connor in his lap, staring down at him with that Mona Lisa smile that means any other person would be bloody _beaming_. Also, and this bears repeating even in Spike's brain, Connor is in his lap. Straddling him, actually. In his lap. With his hands comfortably tight on Spike's shoulders, and that smile, and _in his lap._

"I thought I was going to have to club you over the head," Connor says, leaning in for a kiss that's enthusiastic enough to make deader men than Spike respond. "Dad said I should. Use bricks. Real ones."

"Would've worked, actually." Dru wasn't exactly known for her subtlety, after all. But Connor is kissing him, and wriggling like he knows exactly what to do with that skinny, lithe little body of his, and suddenly Spike just _has_ to get his arms around him, pulling him impossibly tighter because for six bloody, _bloody_ months he hasn't even thought about this, not once, no matter how much he's wanted it, because this is Angelus' -- _Angels'_ \-- son, and Spike's friend.

He doesn't have a lot of those.

"I hated sparring with you," he pants into Connor's mouth, nipping his lower lip to make it even more swollen. "Throwing you around, touching you all over and then having to _stop_ , it was killing me."

Connor laughs like a child. It's the only truly carefree part of him, which is probably why he doesn't laugh all that often. But he does now, letting his head fall back so his throat vibrates, too tempting a target for Spike to pass up. 

He sucks, and Connor laughs, and eventually Connor says, "I know. Me, too."

That's how Spike realized that he was in love with someone who loved him back.

Also, he found out later, a _fantastic_ shag. He has to call Angelus to tell him, right away, although Connor takes the phone away before he can babble about that thing Connor did with his cock in Spike's arse, to say, "Hey, Dad? You want to come over for dinner this weekend? I'd like you to officially meet my boyfriend."


End file.
